President Rodrigo Duterte came to power by promising a bloody war on drugs. Since he assumed office in July 2016, thousands of drug users and dealers have been killed. Nearly all the victims were poor Filipinos who lived in informal settlements in the country’s largest and most populous cities.
This frenzy of violence is rooted in wider and older forms of violence and injustice: poverty, segregation, and systematic violence against urban poor communities, such as forced evictions and police saturation drives. It is also enmeshed in the growing polarization of Philippine cities.
The Philippine case is not unique. Echoes of the Philippine experience can be found worldwide. This conference aims to bring together journalists and scholars from the U.S. Latin America, and elsewhere who have explored the nexus between urban poverty, policing, and violence. It will show how violence is woven into the fabric of policing strategies that have focused on the security and safety of the rich and the middle class, and on criminalizing the poor as thieves, drug addicts, and scoundrels.
